The present invention relates to load-pulled electronic measurement and characterization systems.
Extensive work by the present inventors has shown that load-pulled oscillators have important new capabilities for measurement and characterization. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,862,060, 4,996,490, and 5,025,222, and PCT applications WO 91/00997 (published Jan. 24, 1991) and WO 91/08469 (published 13 Jun. 1991); all of which are hereby incorporated by reference. This "load-pull" technology provides an economical measurement technique which has improved sensitivities by 100.times. to 1000.times. over any prior instrumentation for measurement of microwave phase. This capability makes possible microwave measurements which were proposed in the 1950s but until now have not been available due to the lack of accurate technology. The ground work which was extensively formulated during the early years of microwave spectroscopy may now be utilized to bring about generations of products using this simple but powerful technique.